Peace Corps writers

This coming Saturday, November 2, 2013, at 1 p.m. in Washington, D.C. at the famous Politics & Prose Bookstore (5015 Connecticut Avenue in NW Washington, D.C.) Mark Brazaitis (Guatemala 1990-93) will read from his new book, Julia & Rodrigo. In this novel Mark returns to the Guatemala of his Peace Corps years in a story of young love in a violently divided landscape. Julia is part of a wealthy, Evangelical family and Rodrigo is a Catholic soccer star. Will this Romeo and Juliet fare better than their prototypes? Mark is the winner of the Iowa Short Fiction Award in 1998, and now the Gival Press Novel Award. He directs the West Virginia University Creative Writing Program. As Mark wrote me recently in an e-mail, “I started writing the book soon after I COS’d in 1995! It’s a Romeo and Juliet story set during the Guatemalan civil war.” Check out P&P’s . . .

Half the RPCVs I know are teaching creative writing at colleges and universities; the other half of my RPCV friends are taking writing classes. Now, what does that tell us? Can’t any RPCV get a real job after the Peace Corps or do they all want to be novelists or teach novelists? To help those looking for a school or career as a writer, there’s a new book out from Harvard University Press entitled The Program Era: Postwar Fiction and the Rise of Creative Writing by Mark McGurl. McGurl teaches at Stanford. His new book was reviewed at length by novelist Diane Johnson in The New York Review of Books, November 7, 2013 issue. It’s well worth the read, regardless of where you sit in the college classroom. McCurl’s book makes the point that the rise of American creative writing programs is a “peculiar and suggestive phenomenon,” though, as Diane . . .

Leopards at My Door, Peace Corps Tanzania 1966-1967 by Harriet Hayes Denison (Tanzania 1966-67) Powell’s Espresso Books, $15 236 pages 2013 Reviewed by Deidre Swesnik (Mali 1996-98) Many Peace Corps stories are filled with hilarious and embarrassing food moments.  And Harriet Denison doesn’t disappoint with hers.  At the very beginning of Leopards at My Door, Harriet gets dropped off by the Peace Corps Land Rover at her home for the next two years, a secondary school in the relatively bustling town of Mwanza, Tanzania.  Right away, she meets Mrs. Makonde, the beloved headmistress of the school, and gets a quick tour of the grounds.  Then it’s onto lunch. At lunch with Mrs. Makonde I was self-conscious, trying to please, impress and chat all at once.  Politely, I choked down a very spicy bite of tongue stew with rice and decided we’d better settle the housing quickly.  You know tongue is . . .

Dennis Dale Cordell Cordell, Dr. Dennis Dale DALLAS — Dr. Dennis Dale Cordell, Associate Dean for the University Curriculum/GEC and Professor of History at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, died Wednesday, October 16 after a brief battle with cancer. Funeral services will be held at the First Unitarian Church of Dallas on Friday October 25, 2013 at 4 pm, 4015 Normandy Avenue, Dallas TX 75205. A further celebration of Dr. Cordell’s life and service will be held on November 13th at 4pm in Perkins Chapel of SMU. In lieu of flowers the family requests that donations be sent in memory of Dennis Cordell to Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences of Southern Methodist University, PO Box 750402, Dallas TX 75275-0402, or to the First Unitarian Church of Dallas (address above), or to the work of the Peace Corps–The Health and HIV/AIDS Fund, under Special Funds at donate.peacecorps.gov. Dr Cordell . . .

Last night in Richmond, Virginia, What the Zhang Boys Know by Clifford Garstang (Press 53), was named winner of the 2013 Library of Virginia Award for Fiction. Garstang’s novel-in-stories was in excellent company when named a finalist along with New York Times Notable Book of the Year The Right-Hand Shore by Christopher Tilghman (Farrar, Straus & Giroux), and National Book Award finalist and winner of the 2013 PEN/Hemingway Award for First Fiction, The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers (Back Bay Books). When asked what winning this award meant to him, Garstang said, “Truly, this is one of the highlights of my writing life. I am especially honored to have had What the Zhang Boys Know considered alongside The Right-Hand Shore and The Yellow Birds, two outstanding books by Christopher Tilghman and Kevin Powers.” Garstang is also the author of the award-winning In an Uncharted Country (Press 53), which won a gold medal in the Independent Publishers . . .

In three recent issues The New Yorker has featured Peace Corps writers. All of them writing from different modes of prose. Paul Theroux (Malawi 1963-65) published a brilliant new short story, then Norm Rush (CD Botswana 1978-83) a telling piece on trying to be a writer on “Work for Hire,” and George Packer (Togo 1982-83) in the October 28th issue, an article entitled “Business as Usual” that begins, and says it all with: “House Republicans have suffered a huge tactical defeat of their own devising. But in a larger sense the Republicans are winning, and have been for the past three years, if not the past thirty. On economic-policy matters they are setting the terms.“ Back to Norm Rush’s short essay on labor. His labor. It starts with: “Surveying my motley history of impromptu efforts to make money, I see something like a vast mural by Hieronymus Bosch in which . . .

Fairfield University MFA alumnus wins Peace Corps award for poetry Matthew Hamilton, a 2013 alumnus of the Fairfield University MFA in Creative Writing Program, has won the Peace Corps Writers 2013 Best Book of Poetry award for his first book, “The Land of the Four Rivers” (Cervena Barva Press, 2012). Hamilton, who has been both a legislative assistant on Capitol Hill and a Benedictine monk, volunteered with the Peace Corps in Armenia (2006-08) and the Philippines (2008-10). His book contains 30 poems dealing with what he saw and experienced in Armenia. Readers have praised his poems’ evocative clarity and accessibility. “Expedition into Mystery” opens: I walk over to a woman selling apricots and buy half a kilo. Her gold teeth thank me. Then I walk to Gorki Park, pluck one of my treats out of the bag and take a bite. Some of the juice falls on the sidewalk. A . . .

Talking with Mark Wentling John Coyne interviews Mark Wentling about his new novel Africa’s Embrace that has just been published by Peace Corps Writers. Africa’s Embrace is Mark Wentling’s (Honduras 1967-69, Togo 1970-73; staff: Togo, Gabon, Niger 1973-77) fictional account of the adventures of a young man named David from Kansas who travels to Africa to follow his destiny, and becomes caught up in a mystical, larger-than-life adventure. . Mark, first congratulations on your novel. How in the world did a PCV in Latin America end up in Africa? I always wanted to go to Africa and was hoping to go there when I first signed up for the Peace Corps. After leaving Honduras in May 1969, I traveled about Europe with two other Honduras PCVs. I returned to Wichita in September 1969 and finished my bachelor’s degree. In May 1970, I re-joined the Peace Corps and did training in . . .

Maureen Orth (Colombia 1964-66) was on the TODAY show this morning and talked about her article on Mia Farrow in the new Vanity Fair. Maureen said she asked Farrow if her son, Ronan Farrow, was not Woody Allen’s son, but Frank Sinatra’s child. Farrow replied, “possibly.” “I asked her point blank,” said Orth. “I said, ‘Is Ronan Frank Sinatra’s son?’ and she said, ‘Possibly,’”  (Farrow and Sinatra were married from 1966-68.) “No DNA tests have been done. But they never really broke up. Obviously they got divorced. She was only 21 when she married him, he was 50, she lost her virginity to him … she said he was the love of her life.” Also, noted Orth, Ronan “looks a lot like Frank Sinatra and he sings like Frank Sinatra.” Added Orth, “He’s very close to the Sinatra family … Ronan told me that Nancy Sinatra senior fusses over him . . .

The October 7, 2013 issue of The New Yorker carries a Letter From Egypt column entitled, “Keeping The Faith” written by Peter Heller (China 1996-98) that focuses on Sheikh Mohammed Fakeeh, a blind preacher from a poor farming family on the banks of the Nile who for the first time gave a sermon at Aziz Bellah, and influential mosque in eastern Cairo. In recent days, a few Cairo imams had been suspended, and all of them had been warned not to preach directly about politics. Certain words and phrases were regarded as off limits: “coup,” “legitimacy,” “injustice,” “military rule.” But avoiding the subject entirely was also a risk. If a sermon seemed too bland or apolitical, members of the congregation might shout down the preacher. • Also in the same issue is a new short story by Paul Theroux (Malawi 1963-65) entitled, “I’m The Meat, You’re The Knife” which is . . .

Calling New Delhi For Free (Essay) By Susan Kramer O’Neill (Venezuela 1973-74) Peace Corps Books, $10 (paperback); $3.99 ebook 131 pages 2013 Reviewed by Mary-Ann Tirone Smith (Cameroon 1965-67) I pulled Calling New Delhi for Free out of the mailer excited to be reviewing a collection of essays.  Nothing like a good essay to satisfy and inspire a writer.  I especially love painfully brilliant essays that make me want to say to the writer:  I know, I know; I’ve been there; I’m with you. (Example:  Love, Loss and What I Wore, by Ilene Beckerman.) I turned the book over.  The quotes on the back are hilarious.  Here’s the first one: Almost NOBODY buys essays, UNLESS you’re FAMOUS.” NAT SOBEL, of Sobel Weber Associates, Inc., my (former) agent. And so, I also love humorous essays as long as they’re screamingly funny.  Everything the late Nora Ephron wrote immediately comes to mind, . . .

I received an email from Marcia Krasnow informing me that Larry Fuchs (CD Philippines 1961-66) died in March at the age of 86. Marcia is the daughter of the late Dr. Joseph F. Kauffman who was the first Chief of the Peace Corps Division of Training at the Peace Corps Headquarters in Washington, D.C. (1961-63). The two families were close. Both Fuchs and her father were at Brandeis University before joining the agency. Fuchs wrote one of the first books on the Peace Corps, Those Peculiar Americans: The Peace Corps and American National Character, published by Meredith Press in 1967. In the Peace Corps’ first year of operations, three hundred Volunteers were in the Philippines; after eighteen months, there were six hundred. Fuchs was, at the time, in charge of one third of all the Volunteers in the world. In his book about “those peculiar Americans,” he would write about . . .

by Dan Zigmond With Vietnam a major trading partner and Russian virtually the second language of Silicon Valley, the intersecting wars of the late 20th century are gradually fading from our collective consciousness. But literature moves at a pace slower than politics. If newspapers are the first draft of history, novels have the luxury of being the second, third or 10th. Great books of the Vietnam War are still appearing, nearly four decades after Tim O’Brien got his start. Now, just as Graham Greene and John le Carre penned the essential novels of the Cold War, so has writer and journalist Bob Shacochis given us a new masterpiece, every bit their equal, that will surely stand as the definitive political thriller of those fragile years of relative peace before Sept. 11, 2001. Shacochis begins “The Woman Who Lost Her Soul” in the largely forgotten U.S. intervention in Haiti in the Clinton years, . . .

Carl Jung, the great Swiss psychoanalyst, wrote that during our first forty years we journey outward to find our place in society and during the second forty we journey inward to contemplate our inner world where we can discover the genuine self. The novel, The Ravenala by Jackie Zollo Brooks (Madagascar 1997–99) is driven by characters who must leave behind some of those they love in order to go on this quest. The title is taken from the ravenala palm, the so-called “travelers’ tree” found only in Madagascar. A traveler cutting into the palm’s branches can receive a refreshing drink of cool water; one who is lost can follow the ravenala’s alignment, always on an east/west axis. The travelers’ tree becomes a metaphor for the novel, suggesting that traveling refreshes us, often setting us off in a new direction Among modern male writers, J.M. Coetzee, John Updike, and Philip Roth . . .